Day 1 Walk The Walk

"Walk the walk"
"More walk less talk"
"How is your walk?"
"Are you walking the walk?"
These words look friendly enough but Dad is escalating.
I hear his voice revving, my stomach clenches.
Words like a clammy wet T-shirt on a humid day in July.
The kind of day you would give anything not to have to work outside.
The kind of day you want to run into an air conditioned building and hide.
These words cling to my skin, I can't wipe them away.
These words  he says are meant for himself as much as anyone else.
He holds himself to the same unattainable standard.
"Faith", he quotes "without works is dead"!
This is more about his distorted view of God than how I feel he is judging me.

I want to believe this but my jaw tightens:
childhood emotions resurface
Like bubbles sent speeding up from fish far beneath the surface of a glassy pond.
As always he's oblivious to the impact of his words.

Why do I expect things to be different? What if my faith is dead? 
What if Jesus will say depart from me I never knew you? What if I am a goat not a sheep? What if I am not part of those predestine? What if I am not really saved? What if I can't prove it? And the eternal gnashing of teeth? I am not witnessing to my friends am I denying Christ? Their eternal destiny will it be my demise too?
  
At ten, painfully shy, I carried the dual weight:
Assumed responsibility and  all that I left undone.
I didn't know how to ask for help.
I won scripture memorization drills instead.
I prayed to be brave. I prayed to be good.
Shame and pride and fear created a trifecta of silence.
The  parasitic questions burrowed down
germinating just beneath the surface of my intellect,
tailing me until, for a season,
I shelved my Bible and gave in. 

"Work out your salvation with fear and trembling"
Another cherry picked passages that once made me cringe. I say a prayer for the well intentioned teachers with their
limited knowledge of context and history.

These questions
Incinerated in the fire of my baptismal candle
Washed in the fount
Expunged
Purged with hyssop and made whiter than snow
And still one questioning phrase from a struggling, broken man
Leaves me feeling ten again.
I hold fast to these tangible symbols in water wax fire
Proof  there is a  subtle shift, developing in ethereal currents of my soul.


Trembling at the abundance of mercy and
The healing power of grace
The enormity of  God's redemption
Working out, the difficulty of
Relinquishing myself,
To trust all bravery, goodness and maybe even occasional perfection
Flow
As I walk simply
hand in hand with
Love.